


tiny vessels (one last touch and then you'll go)

by agenderleadingplayer



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Oneshot, Soulmate AU, again i kno i'm sorry, season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-17
Updated: 2016-11-17
Packaged: 2018-08-31 11:09:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8576062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agenderleadingplayer/pseuds/agenderleadingplayer
Summary: he says, "it's all the ways we might have met."
she says, "i'm listening."





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is so so short i'm sorry i hope u enjoy !! :D

in his mind, sometimes, when he does not want to think about anything for a while, or maybe just calm himself down, he thinks about meeting her. and that is how his mind goes, just him meeting her over and over and over because that way there's no end.   
  
he dreams about her sometimes, and he has never told her that, and, he thinks, he probably should. he dreams about her and it is like a runaway train, and he wakes up and sometimes he cries, but not usually. not often.   
  
and in them, the dreams, they are meeting, meeting over and over again, and she is always a door squeak away from him and he is not allowed to look at her face. or, she holds her hand out and he reaches to shake it and he cannot, has been frozen in time, neck craned over photographs of something that does not matter now. or, they meet and he says i am in love with you and she turns around and walks out and it never goes past that.     
  
it is one in the morning and he finds himself calling her.   
  
"sorry i woke you," he says, before she can say anything, and she says it's okay, you're fine, what's up.   
  
he says: we met seven years ago. she says: yes.   
  
he says, i can't stop thinking about it. it is one in the morning and i shouldn't be thinking about it but i am, i am, i can't stop thinking about it. he is not sad but he starts to cry. she says, are you all right, mulder, like she always does, and he almost says i am in love with you but remembers how she had turned around and walked away and he had never gotten to shake her hand.   
  
he says, i don't know scully. i don't know why i felt it was important that i told you but i needed to tell somebody and...   
  
she says, are you sure everything is okay.   
  
and he takes a breath and says "i just had a dream is all." and she doesn't press, and he doesn't know what to say after that.   
  
"do you want to get lunch tomorrow?" she asks, and, yes, tomorrow is saturday so yes, yes.   
  
he accepts and she is about to hang up and he says wait, scully. wait.   
  
"what?"   
  
he almost says it. instead, "i'll tell you tomorrow."   


next morning she treats him to waffles, a bad diner with a tendency for too much whipped cream and watery coffee. brunch, she had said, and he had cringed. they sit, across from each other, the speckled linoleum of the cheap tabletop between them. the tables have no corners. there are no sharp edges here. she says, what's wrong, again, like she means it, and he knows she means the dreams, means, tell me everything.   
  
he wants, more than anything, to kiss her, and he does not tell her.   
  
instead, he starts, tells the story like it belongs to someone else, because it does.   
  
he says, "it's all the ways we might have met."   
  
she says, "i'm listening," and she raises her eyebrows.   
  
one.   
  
she is beautiful and he sees her in the street one evening and says nothing to her. she follows him into the bar he had been heading toward and so he buys her a drink and tells her her eyes sparkle like the moonlight. he does not mean it. he kisses her goodnight. he says, you are beautiful. she means nothing to him. he never sees her again. he does not look at the moon and think of her. he does not look at anything and think of her.   
  
or, two.   
  
she is always a half a centimeter away.   
  
she smells like spring. he knows this. he has caught her perfume before, as she walks past him, always toward something else. she never turns. never looks at him. he had tried to stop her, once, tried to say hello. she does not stop. she never stops.   
  
or maybe three, where he says marry me and means it, or doesn't. and she says yes and means it, or doesn't. and they move in together and the space between the two of them decreases and he never knows what it feels like to miss her. he serves her coffee in the morning. he kisses her good night. one day he leaves, early, a note on his pillow, the side of the bed where he used to sleep. i found someone else, the note says. the note does not say goodbye. he is not good at goodbyes.   
  
the world is small but never small enough for them to run into each other, is four. they never meet and it's just as well. he's not good at being alone so he's not – he sees some people, kisses others. he listens to music and does not believe in ghosts. he watches too many movies.   
  
in five he meets her in passing, in a small barbecue in the middle of nowhere, west virginia, and she serves him a hamburger and he likes the way she says enjoy your meal.   
  
he asks for her number and she gives it to him. they kiss in his car, three-thirty and her off work when she's not supposed to be; he calls her and she does not pick up.   
  
six is a field; six is summer and tall grass and flowers he does not know the name of. six is picnic blankets and lemonade and he is sneezing because of the pollen and does not care. they go to an art museum and he stops in front of a monet, all pastel purples and blues, rocks and water, because it reminds him of her, somehow. he has met her the day before. he holds her hand and kisses her and it is very, very nice.   
  
tall grass takes hold and knots around wrists when she tells him she cannot stay. she takes up the picnic blanket and, it seems, the field itself, tall yellow-green grass and southern shade trees, with her. he never sees her again and doesn't know what to think. eventually he dismisses her as a dream. he has yet to be proven wrong.   
  
and then the one where he meets her and it is like real life, her in a checkered coat too big for her and him, hunched over a desk. she reaches out her hand and he says "i think i might be in love with you" and so she shakes her head and walks out...   
  
and there are more, of course, because they are always meeting, somehow, somewhere, in his mind. in some she is dead. in some he is, or they both are, or neither of them are but they might as well be. they kiss and marry and say i love you to people not each other and it is okay because they have never met, or, they have but it was short and they cannot remember. or, they do remember but it had been nothing, really, nothing at all, and certainly nothing to get emotional about.   
  
and in one of them he is in a diner with her, and she is beautiful, and he is afraid to hold her hand.   
  
it has started to rain.

**Author's Note:**

> shoutout to my favorite person Ever grace (@how-i-met-your-mulder on tumblr) for encouraging me to post this and giving me edits i love her sm :')
> 
> titled after the death cab for cutie song "tiny vessels".
> 
> if you'd like to see more of my stuff you can follow me @quxnce on tumblr! 
> 
> please leave a comment i love feedback!!


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